Director's Cut

rock music

When Sub Pop first approached Butch to do some production for them, it was the Killdozer "Twelve Point Buck" album that caught their attention, the way that album sounded. People started really taking notice and they were like, "This sounds awesome. Who did it? Where did they do it?" And that was better advertising than anything else we could've done. I had no idea who was hearing it or not hearing it, and then all of a sudden to realize it had sort of reached its tentacles out and was filtering all around the country, it was cool, man. Killdozer was one of those bands that really shaped the musical identity of Seattle. They were a universally respected and beloved band. Their sludginess and sense of humor was inadvertently absorbed into the Seattle sound.

dark music

Hi, welcome to Director's Cut. I'm Pete Schwaba, and we just saw a clip from the Smart Studios Story, a documentary about two UW-Madison students, Butch Vig and Steve Marker, who started a music studio and went on to create music that defined a generation. Bands like Killdozer, Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Sonic Youth found their sound right here in Madison. I'm joined today by the film's director, Wendy Schneider, and Smart Studios' co-founder and music producer Butch Vig. Butch and Wendy, welcome to Director's Cut. Thanks for having us. - Thanks for having us, Pete. Yeah, our pleasure. Okay, so let's start right away with how did you, Wendy, find this project? Talk about your connection to the Smart Studios. Well, I started working at Smart in the early '90s and had a relatively great relationship with everyone there, then opened my own studio in the mid '90s. And when Smart closed in 2010, I talked to Butch and Steve about talking to folks in Madison who had a history with the studio, and to get them to just give anecdotes and experience about what it meant to lose Smart. So that's how the film started. Okay, so Butch, what was your reaction when Wendy said she wants to do this project? Were you receptive right away? Well, I talked to Steve Marker and, honestly, we didn't think there was a film there. I told Wendy, "It was just a recording studio, so what?" Over the course of shooting these interviews, I think she realized there were a lot of little narrative threads that ran through it. DIY, how the underground music scene came into the mainstream, and just how the creative process and technology has changed over thirty years, and there are all these threads working and we encouraged her to put together like a little six or seven minute trailer, and we got it, we thought, "Yeah, there is a film here." Nice. Well, let's see another clip from the Smart Studios Story.

punk music

Focus on your thought When I first met Steve, he had a four-track in his apartment on Broom Street. I had a reel-to-reel tape deck, which was really Hi-Fi, that I bought with money I got from mowing lawns in the summers. I used to go over to Steve's apartment. And before we would start recording, we would go downtown to the Plaza Bar and buy these dirt cheap pitchers of beer and drink beer until bar time. And we would get a hell of a buzz on. And then we would look at each other and go, "Let's get smart."

That meant

let's go back to his apartment, plug in guitars and drums, and start rocking on his four- track until the sun came up. To be honest, neither Steve nor I are very proud of the fact that that's where we got our name. It really was more about the recording of it. That's what was fun. And the songs were just kind of something we made up to have something to record. We had no gear. We had like four microphones. I think he had a PV mixer. We ran everything through the Space Echo. Didn't matter if it was vocals, drums, guitar. So everything had this sort of murky, cramped-style slapped echo on it, which actually sounded kind of cool. There were the people in the big cities that made records that went in the record stores. And here, it was more like we just wanted to have something that we could give to our friends and maybe, if it was really cool, sell it for $5 down at the record store.

Appliances S.F.B. "Head Culture"

That meant

Okay, so...

laughing

That meant

talk about as a documentarian, you get this footage. It was great footage from Madison in the early '80s. Where did you find that, and what do you, as a director, making a film, piecing it together, how excited are you to find stuff like that? Unbelievably excited. And actually, I didn't approach the film as if I was a filmmaker or documentarian, I knew that archives were going to be really important in representing the story, because there really wasn't a lot of in-studio footage from the '80s and the '90s. That's really what bands are not doing. Now they are, a little bit more so than they did back then, but I had to dig and call and email and knock on doors, or hang up fliers saying that I was requesting footage for the film, and I think that that's probably why it took as long as it did. I mean, Butch can probably count on two hands how often I would ask him to look in his garage for anything that I could scan or shoot for the film, and that was the case with almost every band that's featured. It's interesting because you say that, but there are a lot of great photos from back in the day, when you guys had your original studio on East Washington. Then when you moved to 1254, seemed like there were a ton of photos. Who had all those? I had some, I would say most of them, though, came from the bands when Wendy reached out. For whatever reason, back in the day, bands didn't seem to want to have cameras or video cameras or whatever in the studio. There was sort of a sacred ground confidentiality. When we're in the studio, you know, it's like Fight Club. You don't talk about Fight Club.

all three laughing

That meant

And I sorta kick myself now, 'cause there were some amazing sessions there and I should've just had a little camera running like a fly on the wall. Now, of course, everybody does it, they post everything, but back then--

Pete

Yeah, too much probably, yeah. Butch, so we were talking a little earlier about you being from Viroqua. Did that mold your music sensibilities in any way, being from a small town, your upbringing? Talk a little bit about the influence a small town had on you as a producer and an artist. I think a lot of it had to with my parents, my dad was a small-town doctor, Norwegian, stoic, you know, had a really solid work ethic, a lot of discipline. My mom was sort of a bon vivant. She was a musician, singer, played piano and trumpet, and very outgoing, and she played music all the time at our house. I mean, in Viroqua on the radio, I heard polka music and country music primarily, and she bought Beatles records. Tijuana Brass records and Frank Sinatra, and she would point out, "Listen to that melody. "It's brilliant," and it could be Tijuana Brass. She was not elitist about that, and I think I took that with me, 'cause as much as I'm known for being a rock producer, a lot of the music I was exposed to was any style, and I still consider myself sort of a pop geek, in a way. If it's a good song, it doesn't matter what kind of genre or style it is, it's a good song. Yeah, and what about you, Wendy? I mean, you grew up, I assume, on the East Coast, right? In New Jersey. How did coming to Madison, did this change your sensibility in any way, did it give you a different outlook as a producer? I don't think that it changed, but I was really just feeding off of my, I usually just feed off of the environments that I'm in, so I think with Smart, I picked up a lot in the years that I was engineering there, I knew that it felt right for a lot of people to be in that space, and I think that losing that space, and what that meant, was gonna be something important. And I noticed that when the announcement came that Smart had closed, so I think I was just really aware of it being something that was worth at least exploring. And I think, again, like when we looked at the footage from those early interviews, I probably did twenty or thirty, people were really touching a nerve with the loss and making a connection to their experience at Smart as being really important to their lives. It's so funny, I used to do stand-up in the '90s and I would work Madison, and I drove by 1254 every time I came into town, and then when I saw this, I'm like, "How did I not know all this cool stuff "happened in this little, tiny building?" Had no clue. It looked like a crack house. That's why. You'd drive by and go, "There's that ugly crack house on East Wash." That's probably why I didn't stop, but let's take a look at another clip from the Smart Studios Story. I think they'd come into their own when they moved out of the unair-conditioned warehouse space and bought their own building and could set it up exactly how they want. Walk this way. These are a lot louder. Right in here. It's some loud stuff, I tell 'ya. I don't know how much money they spent on building that studio, but it couldn't have been a lot. Smart had like industrial carpeting, bland white walls. It looked like somebody just sort of threw it up in a day. It was very roughly done, and there were all these weird angles, and it was deafeningly loud. It was so loud it was uncomfortable.

percussion

Pete

I'm a fool for romance I'm a fool for romance We always wanted bands to feel like whatever they needed to get done, we would help facilitate that. And whether they needed other session players to come in, there was always a great local, supportive community of other musicians and artists in Madison who would, at the drop of a hat, come in and play drums, or sing backup vocals, or put down strings, or piano, or whatever it was. They were friends of ours, you know? So it was like a no-brainer to call them. They'd be here in 20 minutes. I always keep a steel guitar and an accordion in the trunk of my car, especially in wintertime. It weighs down the back end. I have rear-wheel drive, and it was hard to get through the snow sometimes. And a lot of times, I'd drop by Smart and, "Do you have your steel guitar?" Of course. And, you know, "Play on this." Sure, I'd play on it. Very informal. There was never any sort of business relationship like that, where people said, "Well, I need--" You know," How much money am I going to get paid?" That was the last thing that would come out of someone's mouth. They didn't really care about that. They just wanted to come down and play in the session. You're surrounded by people you know, friends. It's no big deal. It was very, very easy. Very enjoyable. Never was I nervous. Never was I-- did I feel pressure. It didn't have that studio clock, sterile doctor's office thing going on. You're here. Let's get it done. Let's make it right. Let's make it happen. It was a collaborative thing. So, Wendy, okay, I gotta ask you, does the process of making a film, compare that to the process of making a record, if you would. Similar, different, more stressful, less stressful? Well, I have to want to do either to do a good job. I really have to wanna serve the project, I think I use that approach with anything that I do, with relationships that I have, or jobs that I'm working on, I think working on the Smart film, it felt like I was serving the community, I was serving Butch and Steve, I was serving myself, really wanting to do right by the project at hand, and I think with my band, or with projects that I work on in the studio, I just take the same approach. It's just part of how I'm wired. So it's torturous sometimes, but I think it keeps me on track. It takes a lot longer to make an indie film, by the way, than it does to make an indie record. Okay, well that's interesting. That was one of my questions Good point. Well, I guess it depends, but yes, you're absolutely right. Yeah, film is such a long process, I would assume a record is not. I love the scene in the movie, or the clip where you guys are talking about drinking until bar time and then getting smart, and that's where the title came from, and then you'd go and play music, I mean, most people do horribly regrettable things at bar time. You guys are...

laughing

Pete

Talk about when you found the Smart sound, Butch. When did you realize you kind of had a style or something you could bring to records? Wow, that's a good question. Probably in the first studio, in the Gisholt Building, and it had more to do, I think, with some of the bands that were coming in. You know, a lot of the bands were really scrappy and raw. As a producer and an engineer, I didn't really know what I was doing, so I was figuring things out. And some of those early records, I really started to figure out how to record drums and how to record a guitar, and part of it was just trying to make them sound clear or better, and it didn't happen overnight. There was a lot of trial and error. And when you listen to the film, the soundtrack to the Smart Studios Story, it's 90 minutes long and the music gets better through the 90 minutes, it gets more widescreen and better, more focused and some of those, as you know, some of those early recordings are really raw. Yeah, but that's the charm of it, I think, that's a great-- I didn't realize that was by design though. That's really interesting. So, here's another question for you, Butch. I'm very curious about-- like, there's a point in the movie where you're talking about Killdozer, and you guys were at a bar across the street and you were about to hit the studio, and they had no songs, and you're like, "Well, we're just writing stuff down." How much of a successful record, like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, is production, and how much is the actual singer-songwriters? Like, I'm sure they'd have some level of success anyway, but what does really good production bring to it and what is more, would you say, responsible for the success of a record? Well, when you talk about Twelve Point Buck that was an interesting record because they had some riffs and some beats. Mike didn't have any lyrics. We went to the Friendly, or the Crystal Corner-- I don't remember where, and sat down, drank a pitcher of beer and they just talked about all these ideas, and I wrote down farm reports, horn section, accordion, tuba, all these things. And Mike Gerald was like, "That'd be great, Butch. Let's record all those on the record."

Pete and Wendy laughing

Pete

And so it was a very experimental record. They would literally jam. I would take bits and pieces of music and cut it into a song, and they'd go, "Wow, we have a verse and a chorus." Then Mike would hear that and write some lyrics and then we'd bring in and overdub a lot of this extra instrumentation stuff, so the record has a very unusual sound. I think, in answering your question though, it's 50-50, you know, a lot of bands, like when I did Nirvana, they had practiced for six months and those songs were in really good shape. I didn't have to do too much arrangement work. When we went in the studio there were a couple songs we tweaked the arrangements, but for the most part, it was about getting things to sound good, and then making sure the performances were really, really good. That seems to have worked out pretty well for everybody. Yeah.

laughing

Pete

Let's see another clip from the Smart Studios Story. Somebody suggested that we should work this guy called Butch Vig, who was up in Madison, Wisconsin and had his own studio. And I got a call, and they said, there's this band from Chicago who are great. They're kind of psychedelic, kind of rock, and they're really amazing live. When they came up to the studio, you know, I hadn't seen a picture or anything of them. And it was just sort of like, "Wow, they look cool." We went looking for tone. I mean, drum tone. We had heard those Die Kreuzen records, the Killdozer records. And that was big news back then, as far as drums, density, bass, guitar. I mean, there was some real cool things going on sonically. This was the first time we were working with like an indie producer in his home studio doing things his way. It was all a world totally, completely beyond us. And that formed the relationship between Butch and I about what he thought the Smashing Pumpkins should sound like and what I thought. And we sort of found this nice balance, which you can kind of hear on that first single, which is "Tristessa," and the back is called "La Dolly Vita." The Smashing Pumpkins getting a record deal with Caroline, wow. Somebody at a big record company in New York figured out that this band is great. Like, that's the most amazing thing ever. When we went in to make "Gish" with Butch, we knew what we wanted to sound like, but we knew we wanted a really clear version of it. We spent a tremendous amount of time sort of getting the exact right sound. So the exact right drum sound, the exact right bass sound, and the exact right guitar sound. I wanted to make great sounding records. And I think it was the first time I felt a kinship with someone who really wanted to go the extra mile and was willing to take the time, and, hopefully, patience, to do that. Once we started making the "Gish" record, we immediately went into a level of perfection that neither one of us had ever experienced in a situation like that. I met my match in Billy Corgan. He pushed me as hard as he could, and I pushed him right back. Wendy, in your bio I read, it said that your work is dedicated to bringing creativity into contact with the community. Right. - Can you elaborate on that? You seem very community-oriented, and this film is certainly an example of that, but does that relate to any of your other projects? I think the projects that I've done in Madison and in my life, I'm always trying to figure out a way to connect with where I live or where I am, so doing projects that have an outreach component or an activism component or community component like the film, it just feels more natural to how I like to work. There have also been projects that have spawned from my own sense of creativity. You know, they haven't been commissioned projects. So I'm usually trying to figure out how to DIY myself to being able to pay my rent and do stuff that I believe in and enjoy and that usually will involve friends or people that I want to get to know a little bit more. And do you balance that well, because if it's a passion project, maybe that you're not seeing money for up front, is it harder to focus on something like that, or is it easier to focus on something like that, or do you just have to find a balance? I think that any unrest that I experience is part of balance for me, at this stage of life. But I'm not really sure. I think that the more work that I'm doing, I completely forgot your question.

Pete laughing

Pete

Just finding a balance between-- We'll get you through this, don't worry. You're doing great. It's okay, it was something about finding balance between my projects? Between when you're doing a passion project as opposed to something you're actually getting paid to do, and a passion project. Yeah, I mean I think that I choose projects, well I hope for projects that I get paid to do that I'm passionate about. I don't do too much that I'm not passionate about. I don't think I'm very good at it. Yeah, that's interesting. A lot of people could probably say that. Yeah, or I won't do a second job or I'm not as easy about doing it. I kick and scream a little bit more if I don't enjoy it. Was it hard to get the interviews, like Billy Corgan, Dave Grohl? Were these guys pretty willing to talk? I would imagine with, you know, you guys are all probably friends still, but-- For the most part. I really feel like it's a testament to Butch's relationship, his relationships with artists. I mean, he reached out in, I started the film in 2010, Butch and Steve really enjoyed the footage, and it was your idea, like "Hey, why don't you come out here "and let's get a few other... "Let's broaden the pool a little bit. We'll get Billy, maybe Dave Grohl." You were working with him at the time, with Dave at the time, and really, these were pretty easy to come by, because Butch was opening those doors and so he was in essence, sort of speaking for the project which was really fortunate. They seem like they had a lot of fun talking about those days. I think they did. - Yeah, definitely. I think they wanted to be part of it. Butch, when you're producing these guys, Kurt Cobain, Billy Corgan, Sonic Youth, do you have to gain their trust? Talk about that process, like, getting them to trust you, because it seems like there were points in the film where people are like "Where are we going? Madison?" And you won them over, obviously, and had a lot of success, but talk about that process a little bit. Well, what I've discovered is 50% of producing is psychology. When I first started out, I was focused on the drum sound, or how do I get a guitar sound, and then I started to understand more about arrangements of songs and then I really started to realize that you have to get inside a band's head. And as a producer, it's my job to understand what their vision is, I like working with bands that have a strong vision, so I don't want to necessarily have to bring in that vision. I want to help them go to where they want to go. And in order to do that, I have to understand what makes them tick and what motivates them, what they don't like, how the dynamics are of all the people in the band are working together, and that can be very complicated, 'cause bands can be incredibly dysfunctional. Incredibly dysfunctional. And so I have to navigate all those things while trying to make sure the snare drums sound good and that they're playing well and what does this lyric mean on the last chorus or going into the bridge, whatever. So there's a lot of things that are wrapped in that, but psychology, that's probably more than 50% of making a record. Great answer. Let's see another clip from the Smart Studios Story.

Garbage performs "Stupid Girl"

Pete

It was the place where you could shut the doors and feel like everything was safe and we could make music and not be bothered by anybody. And I could stick up posters and pictures and just create a little haven to make music in. It's kind of fresh, you know, it came out of a grunge movement where everybody was just plugging guitars in and making a racket, and then we came in and took all these little elements and carefully shoved them and crafted them together. For so long, this new project was making this record that no one knew about. I was one of the few people who knew what was going on and how exciting it was and how potentially-- you never know-- but it seemed like it was going to be pretty awesome.

Garbage performs "Run Baby Run"

Pete

Love can be so strange Don't it amaze you? Garbage, being the main client in Studio A or Studio B was a blessing and a curse. We did four records there, spread over 10 years, and each record took about a year, but then we would go on tour. The tour took Duke, Steve, and me away from the studio, so Mike had to really hustle to get bands in when we left town. Not a good business model. If you don't have rooms open, bands will look for other studios. Life can be so cruel Butch and Steve were not really the managers. They didn't run the studio. They owned the studio but they were also the main clients of the studio. And there's a lot of levels of complexity that most people didn't understand. We knew what had to happen to keep working, but we just had to keep doing it.

tape reversing

Pete

I didn't touch mine, thank God. So Wendy, you obviously had a lot of cooperation from, you know, you produced a lot of these guys, or engineered them, and you know Butch and Steve. Aside from all the cooperation you got, what was the biggest challenge making this film? I'd never done a project this big before, so that was a challenge, just the size of it, and making a good film, and financing. It didn't keep me from working on the project, but it was an element that I had to wrestle with on my own. I mean, I was very much, I was wearing a lot of hats for the Smart Studios Story and it was really challenging at times, and I really wrestled with continuing on with the film. Really? Yeah, I remember my friend Lilada Gee would say to me, "You got screwed. Now raise the baby."

all three laughing

Pete

And that was sort of the mantra, you know, or it was "Well, another level, another devil," you know, so there was always something to overcome, but once we did the Kickstarter and we brought in $120k, that really changed the game of the whole project, 'cause I felt that now there were 800 people sort of on board as supporters and I felt a bit more connected to the audience of the film, and I think that propelled me to finish. Is it the film you set out to make? Absolutely Is it better, is it what you expected, I guess? I think it's what I expected of myself. I wanted to make a really entertaining, engaging film, but I think that I really did want to make my film, but I wasn't really sure what that was. You know what I mean? - Yeah, I think it's great. I mean it's Wendy's baby, like she said, she wrote it, directed it, edited it, had to raise the funds, get the clearance. The clearance in an indie film like this, there's 70 pieces of music and all the content and every single thing had to be cleared and sometimes tracking down who owned the rights to it was crazy, it drove us kind of crazy. I think you have to just put on blinders when you do that. I know there were points where Wendy got really frustrated 'cause we'd sort of run into walls, sometimes one artist would be holding up clearance on a song and that could potentially hold up the whole film. Yeah. And luckily, we got through it all. And we had some help from a lot of people who came on board, but it was a lot of work. I was curious about that, too. I was going to ask you about that. It's funny that you guys, being in that industry, still have that much getting clearance and all that, 'cause that can just be such a headache, but I'm surprised you guys had to go through it with all your connections and that kinda stuff. Well I think the connections made it a bit more affordable, and also the story made it desirable for people to sign off, but at the end of the day, you're not necessarily working with the artist, you're working with a publisher, or you're working with somebody who owns the masters, and that might not be the artist. So Dan Wilcox came on board and helped us gratis, do a lot of the music clearances from a major label perspective, I mean standpoint, and then we did all the local stuff here, and most bands were just thrilled to let us use their music and then all the other things were worked out, anything that was outside of that we just worked out. Butch, you said Garbage is putting new stuff out and you're gonna tour, and that's awesome, and you're gonna have a Madison Day.

What do you prefer

do you prefer being on tour, being the guy on stage, or the guy behind the scenes? Oh, man, I'm really lucky I've been able to sort of wear multiple hats my whole career, you know I started out in a band, and I was a drummer before I became a songwriter and an engineer and producer, and I still like being in bands, and we're working on a new Garbage record now and I love where a lot of the new songs are going. It's fun to play shows. I do not like the touring because of the travel. It really wears you down. I mean, really, that's what touring is, is getting from Point A to Point B and there are points you go, "Man, I dunno if I can do this anymore," but then you play a show in front of two or 5,000 or 10,000 people or whatever and you get this crazy, incredible adrenaline rush that you can't get in a recording studio. But I also like being in a recording studio because I'm a lab rat. I like to just come up with crazy songs. It's a nice problem to have when you're multi-successful at a lot of things, right? You guys are great today. Thank you so much for being here. It's been really nice talking to you. Thank you very much. - Thank you, it's fun. Good luck with the film's continued success. Hey, thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information on the Smart Studios Story, please go to wpt.org and click on "Director's Cut." While you're there, send us an email or find out how to submit a film, I'm Pete Schwaba, and Butch and Wendy are about to discover the Schwaba sound. That's right, I'm about to give them my demo tape. Sorry.

laughing

What do you prefer

Sit back and relax, because the Smart Studios Story starts now on Director's Cut Presents.